Lincolnshire

Service Manager

Tony qualified from the University of Hertfordshire in 2011. He worked in Community rehabilitation until 2013 and completed rotations as part of Sutton and Merton community services. He began work in a musculoskeletal outpatient setting in 2015 and became a Senior Physiotherapist that year, before being TUPE’d to Connect Health in 2016. Tony has an interest in operational leadership and became a Team Lead for Merton in August 2018. In October 2019 he was seconded into a Service Manager post in the Croydon MSK Service.

Advanced Practitioner Physiotherapist

Following graduation from the University of East Anglia as a Physiotherapist in 2007, Emily worked for 5 years as an MSK Physiotherapist which she thoroughly enjoyed. She found working with complex patients whose conditions impacted on both their emotions and social function was the most rewarding to work with, so she decided to specialise in the field of Pain Management. Emily’s particular interests include pain neuroscience and psychological therapies. Initially she worked within a multi-disciplinary hospital pain service before moving into community pain management, where she has worked in leadership positions including clinical operations and quality and governance. She is thrilled to be leading the holistic Community Lincolnshire Pain service for Connect Health, which is improving access to and the quality of pain management treatments available to the people of Lincolnshire particularly the isolated population in rural communities.

Clinical Lead and Pain Physiotherapist

Grainne qualified as a Physiotherapist from the University of Ulster in 1994 and moved to England from Northern Ireland to begin working in MSK Physiotherapy. She had a variety of roles over the South East of England for 3 years, building up her clinical experience before moving to Australia. She worked there for a year and developed an interest in spinal pain.

After moving back to the UK, Grainne worked at BMI Hospital in Buckinghamshire in collaboration with a spinal surgeon to provide timely rehabilitation advice for pre and post-surgical patients. In 2000, she moved to Norfolk and both got married and had her son within 1 year. She began to work closely with Pain Consultants at the Norwich BUPA Hospital and in 2004 was asked to join the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital Pain Team as their first physiotherapy team member.

For the last 15 years, Grainne has been building up an MDT of Physiotherapists & Occupational Therapists, alongside Clinical Psychology colleagues. Together they have developed a Pain Management Programme, Pain Educational Seminars and Mindful Movement classes amongst many innovations. Over the last 5 years, she developed the role of the Specialist Physiotherapist in Pain to include assessment and management of new patients.

Grainne joined the Connect team as we move towards providing community based, and AHP lead pain management services in Lincolnshire because she absolutely believes that Pain Management begins with Self-Management. In addition to accessible, timely, evidenced based treatments which enable those people who are struggling with persistent pain to ‘live well’ with their pain and enjoy meaningful fulfilled activities.

Lead Psychologist

Lizzie works as a Pain Psychologist for our Lincolnshire service and is the Lead Psychologist for the team. She qualified as a Clinical Psychologist from UEA in 2000, and worked as a neuropsychologist for many years within a community neurorehabilitation team in Peterborough, before joining the team at Connect Health in Lincolnshire.

Lizzie has a passion for listening carefully to people and working with them to help them adapt and find effective ways to engage in the things they value and enjoy in life, alongside their challenges. She is passionate about using compassionate approaches to help understand and support emotional wellbeing and sees learning how to do this as a lifelong process.

Outside of work, Lizzie enjoys walking in the woods with her family and dogs, singing, dancing, gardening, running and laughing with good friends.

Specialist Pain Physiotherapist Team Lead

I trained as a physiotherapist in Adelaide, Australia after deciding I wanted a change from sitting at a desk all day working in IT. I had the great pleasure of learning pain science from David Butler and Lorimer Moseley as an undergraduate student – their sessions were always entertaining and thought provoking.

After working with children with disabilities for a year, I joined a musculoskeletal physiotherapy practice where the owner was a chronic pain specialist, and I realised I enjoyed the challenge of working with people who have persistent pain.

My second love in physiotherapy is women’s health and I have run ante/post-natal exercise classes, taught practical skills for labour, treated pregnancy and postnatal symptoms, and assessed and managed pelvic floor/continence issues.

Combining women’s health with persistent pain has led to me having a special interest in chronic pelvic pain syndromes, including conditions such as endometriosis, interstitial cystitis, overactive pelvic floor muscles and vulvodynia.

I moved back to England in 2018 for family reasons. While many think I must be mad, I love getting outdoors into the beautiful English countryside with my family and our dog (whatever the weather), and I’m very happy to not be checking for spiders and snakes in my garden anymore!

Specialist Pain Occupational Therapist

Prior to qualifying as an Occupational Therapist, Karen worked in community hospital services and stroke services and trained as a mature student.  Following graduation as an Occupational Therapist from Sheffield Hallam University in 2017, Karen worked for Lincolnshire Community Health services in transitional care and rehabilitation with older adults.  Before a change in career, Karen worked in sports development roles with national governing bodies of sport and local authority teams.

Karen enjoys green spaces and the outdoors including horse riding and rambling and passionately understands the importance of engagement with meaningful activities to help maintain a healthy lifestyle and manage persistent pain symptoms.

Advanced Practice Physiotherapist

Donna has a varied physiotherapy background, having worked in the NHS, in private clinics and at a private hospital. As well as also working in professional sport, specifically football at club and international level and at all levels of rugby league, ballet, for military RAF and the army. She has 2 master’s degrees with distinction in Sports Medicine and Sports Biomechanics, in addition to a post graduate diploma in Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy with merit. She has also just been awarded a postgraduate certificate in the Clinical Management of Pain with distinction. Donna is a member of the MACP, which is the Musculoskeletal Association of Chartered Physiotherapists and her areas of interest are in persistent pain and complex musculoskeletal problems. In her spare time, Donna enjoys spending time at the gym; particularly spinning, bootcamps, circuits and has just taken up weightlifting.